Top 40 Container Carriers

Top 40 Container Carriers

Mergers and acquisitions and soon-to-launch alliances are changing the rankings of the JOC Top 40 Container Carriers in U.S. containerized trade. Volume increased 2.7 percent year-over-year to 23.7 million 20-foot-equivalent units in the first nine months of 2014, with Maersk Line and Mediterranean Shipping Co. accounting for 21.4 percent of total trade. The two partners in the 2M Alliance, scheduled to launch in January, had combined U.S. exports totaling nearly 2.2 million TEUs, or 22.9 percent of the market, while their 2.9 million TEUs in U.S. imports gave them a combined 20.4 percent market share.

TUI, the German tourism group, is talking with potential buyers of its remaining stake in Hapag-Lloyd as a way of finally exiting container shipping, the chairman of the former owner of the country’s largest ocean carrier said.

Although Hapag-Lloyd announced the completion of its merger with Chilean carrier CSAV on Dec. 2, it must still navigate the rocky shoals created by the two carriers’ combined losses and heavy debt load.

The CKYHE Alliance this week received U.S. regulatory approval to further integrate its newest member, Evergreen Line, into its vessel-sharing agreement covering the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade lanes.

Maersk Line is reviewing the ocean and inland services it provides in the trans-Pacific trade — a notoriously high-cost and unprofitable trade lane for container lines — with an eye to increasing the rates it gets for those services or eliminating those that don’t make money.